Wrap Up: Make Way for Ducklings, Field Day, Teacher Inservice

We so enjoyed our row of Make Way for Ducklings!  This is one of those classic children's books that we had read plenty of times before we started our homeschooling adventure with Five in a Row.  I actually put our copy away for several months before this row, in hopes of them being excited to see it again when we got it out.  They definitely were!  Here's what all we did:

Social Studies: We spent some time exploring this super cool Google Lit Trip marked with where all the Mallard family went on their trip around Boston.  I knew next to nothing about the geography of the city of Boston before we played with the map, and I was sad to hear of places that just became "real" to me on the news with the explosions following the Boston marathon.  So very sad.  My kids didn't hear any of the marathon news, though, so their only association with Boston is Mr. McCloskey's delightful story.  Makes me grateful for childhood innocence.

Langauge Arts: We did an activity with both rhyming and alphabetical order.  In the story, the eight ducklings have rhyming names, playing off of the sound a duck makes, and starting with eight sequential letters of the alphabet: Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Oack, Pack, and Quack.  I had the kids choose a critter from Hazel's fingerprint drawing book and make 5-10 of them.  Then we named them with the same method used in the book.

I made baby birds, named Cheep, Deep, Eep, Feep, Geep, Heep, Ieep, and Jeep.  Jono made baby owls named Hoo, Ioo, Joo, Koo, Loo, and Moo.  Hazel made pigs named Oink, Poink, Quoink, Roink, Soink, Toink, Uoink, Voink, and Woink.  Charlie made kitties named Few, Gew, Hew, Iew, Jew, Kew, Lew, and Mew.  I thought these came out so cute!

For science, we read a couple of nonfiction books from the library on ducks, learned about their life cycle, body parts, etc.  We did a cut & paste sequencing activity on their life cycle.

We also did a fun demonstration on the how the oils that ducks spread when they preen their feathers make them waterproof.   We brushed some oil onto feathers, pretending that our paintbrushes were our duck bills, preening.  Then we used an eye dropper to drip some water onto the feathers and watched it bead up and roll right off of the oily feathers.

I had an applied math day planned, but FIAR got pushed out of our schedule that day, and we never made it up.  It was about the calendar (days of the week, 7 days in a week, etc), which we talk about enough as it is, so I'm not concerned.  I didn't plan an art day with this row, since we spent two days on science.

We took a park day, to try to spot a mallard family.  We saw TONS of bachelor mallards, a handful of couples, but no ducklings.  Seeing Mr. and Mrs. Mallard was exciting enough, though.  We did see some other (non-mallard) ducklings in the canal by Target on the way to swim lessons last week, and were running early enough that we pulled over and got out of the car to admire them, so that will have to be good enough.

bachelor mallards

Last Friday, we had field day with our homeschool group! SO fun. I was assigned to work with Jono's team, the 5-7yo boys.  That made for a wild few hours.  David was off work, and he came along and worked with Charlie's team (4yo boys).  Neither of us was with Hazel, but I did manage to get a picture of her in the sack race when I we were walking by on our way to another event.  All three of my kids placed first in three-legged race on their various teams.  Isn't that random?  Who knew that was a Wallace family strength?!

Oops. :)

After field day, I had the luxury of taking a teacher inservice day.  I spent Friday afternoon and evening, through Saturday afternoon on my own (stayed in a hotel, even!) to do some reading and thinking on our homeschool.  I read some, listened to a couple of Susan Wise Bauer's audio lectures (which I highly recommend!), and organized some curriculum I had bought and not yet gotten around to using.  I'm excited about using this new curriculum this week, and I'll have to post a review in a few weeks once I see how it's going.

It was a very productive 24 hours, and I need to do it far more often!  My wonderful dear husband said that the kids were angels and that he didn't see any reason why I shouldn't take an inservice day quarterly or so.  I think I'll take him up on that!